Affiliate Marketing Software vs. Affiliate Networks: How to Choose the Right Solution for Your Business

Brands continue to spend more on affiliate marketing, with steady increases to a whopping $8.2 billion in 2022. The best part? All that spending amounts to a profound ROI because you only pay affiliates for commissions on your product sales. 

But to make the most of this profitable marketing model, you’ll need the right support. That means investing in an affiliate marketing solution to grow your affiliate program and manage your performance. 

In this comprehensive guide to affiliate marketing solutions, we’ll break down the differences between affiliate marketing software and networks and the benefits of using each for your affiliate program. 

What is Affiliate Marketing & Tracking Software

Affiliate marketing software is a technology that helps brands manage their affiliate programs. It usually includes real-time tracking features to connect your affiliates to sales in your business, either via affiliate links, coupon codes, or cookies.

Other common features of affiliate software include: 

• Reporting: Most affiliate tracking platforms include reporting dashboards to help you see total numbers of sales, conversions, and value over the course of various historical periods. You can also toggle reports to view performance by affiliates on many platforms. 
• Commissions: Commission structures like flat-fee or percentage-based rates dictate how you pay your affiliates. Some software solutions also include performance-based automated increases, as well as industry-specific structures like recurring commissions for SaaS brands and product-specific commissions for e-commerce brands. 
• Integrations: Integrations link your affiliate software to other tools in your tech stack. For example, Tapfiliate’s integration with Zapier helps you automate marketing workflows across different apps to streamline your process and be more productive. We also offer direct integrations to payment processors like PayPal, email tools like Mailchimp, and e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify. 
• Affiliate communication: Whether through in-platform messaging or email notifications, most affiliate tools allow you to communicate and share updates with your affiliates. 

Pricing for affiliate marketing software varies drastically, depending on: 

• The subscription tier and included features
• Conversion and click tracking capacities
• Niche-specific features 
• Combination of other marketing solutions with the affiliate tool, like advertising

Some affiliate marketing solutions offer ways to recruit new affiliates to your program, too. While this is a feature Tapfiliate offers through our automated customer referral program, you might want to assess professional affiliates on a larger marketplace. 

That’s where affiliate networks come in. 

What is an Affiliate Network?

Affiliate networks (also known as cost-per-action or CPA networks) act as marketplaces for brands to find affiliates for their affiliate programs. They also connect publishers to thousands of merchants in a reversed marketplace. 

The main gist? Affiliate networks have partner recruitment as a core purpose, while affiliate marketing software speaks to more strategic and operational elements of your program. 

Whether you’re starting from scratch or an established brand with a long-standing affiliate marketing program, an affiliate network can help you grow your business. 

For example, an affiliate network like Admitad offers brands a marketplace to browse through potential affiliates. Through the filtered search function, you can filter them by affiliate type, like web publishers, influencers, or any other partner you deem fit. Then, you’ll see a tailored list of affiliates with social media handles for you to analyze and, if fitting, invite to your program: 

You can also view important, metric-based specifications for each affiliate, like

• Engagement rate
• Monthly visitors
• Categories and tags
• Audience countries

In turn, you can create a detailed brand profile to highlight your affiliate program attributes and attract publishers. You could include items like: 

• Commission rates: List your commission structure and rates, including any tiers that could increase those rates based on performance. 
• Cookie time: This is how long an affiliate has to be attributed for a sale, starting from a potential customer’s first interaction with that affiliate’s content. 
• Branded assets: Build brand authority and recognition with descriptions, visuals, and logos to help publishers notice you. 

Bottom line? Affiliate networks help both affiliates and brands find each other and make money together. 

Main Differences Between Affiliate Marketing & Tracking Software and Affiliate Networks

Here are the main differences between an affiliate marketing platform vs network:

• Marketplace: Most affiliate networks offer an established, searchable database where brands and publishers can find each other based on categories, metrics, and niche criteria. Affiliate marketing platforms don’t usually offer this service. 
• Affiliate check: Affiliate networks have their own criteria for affiliates before allowing them to use their network. While affiliate platforms also offer security features, brands can benefit from the extra layer offered by an affiliate network. 
• Operational features: While some affiliate networks have an affiliate dashboard and reporting tools within their offerings, they’re often limited to the affiliates you find on that network. They don’t include metrics and performance insights for your previous affiliates. On the other hand, it’s easy to migrate your entire affiliate program outline into an affiliate platform and start tracking immediately. 
• Pricing: Merchants have to pay monthly fees and an initiation fee to use an affiliate network. Affiliate marketing platforms don’t usually have initiation fees. 

However, both affiliate marketing solutions bring unique benefits to your program. 

Benefits of Using Affiliate Marketing & Tracking Software

Affiliate tracking software puts your affiliate program into revenue overdrive by giving you eyes and ears on performance, streamlining tedious processes, and offering insights to help you improve conversions. 

Here are some more specific benefits of using affiliate marketing platforms:

Flexible commissions

A manually operated affiliate program doesn’t come close to the efficiency and variety of an affiliate software’s commissions. For example, Tapfiliate’s commissions give you the autonomy to decide how you want to pay your affiliates.

You can pick from: 

• Lifetime commissions: This is a great affiliate engagement tool in the e-commerce industry that rewards your affiliates for strong promotional practices. With this structure, they don’t get a commission for a customer’s first purchase alone. If that same customer makes additional purchases, the referring affiliate will snag a commission on each one. 
• Percentage-based commissions: This awards affiliates with your chosen purchase price percentage, which ranges from 5% to 50%, depending on your industry and unique business scenario. 
• Flat-fee commissions: These are exact dollar amounts that you award to affiliates for each purchase. 
• Recurring commissions: If you offer a subscription-based business where customers pay monthly (or weekly or annually) for your service, this commission structure awards referring affiliates a commission each time your customer pays for their subscription. 

On top of that, affiliate platforms like Tapfiliate can automate performance-based increases to engage affiliates and nurture your program without wasting too much time tracking the details. 

Better relationships with affiliates

A more organized program, with scheduled notifications, shared content assets, and regular communication, will make the work process and lives of your affiliate partners much easier. In turn, they’re more likely to stick around and reduce your affiliate turnover. 

For example, Tapfiliate’s branded assets help you share pre-made templates and content pieces that your affiliates can easily share on their platforms. This saves them the time and effort needed for content creation, brings them closer to commissions, and improves your affiliate relationships. 

More productive workflows

Imagine tracking affiliate conversions on an Excel spreadsheet. Not bad, you say? Multiply those conversions exponentially when your program experiences growth – that’s when you really start to experience the productive value of affiliate tracking and reporting via affiliate software. 

As you ponder how to choose affiliate software, look for features that make your workflows faster. For example, Tapfiliate’s Zapier integration links multiple software tools across your workflows for better productivity. 

Affiliate revenue growth

Affiliate management tools give you unparalleled insights into your program performance, from frequent-selling products and affiliates, propelling them to lags in revenue compared to individual affiliates. These insights help you tweak and tailor your program to be more effective and thus grow your revenue. 

Want to make the most out of your affiliate program? Check out our article on affiliate marketing tips and strategies. 

Benefits of Joining an Affiliate Network like Admitad

Affiliate networks offer unique benefits you might not always access through an affiliate tracking platform. Let’s take a look: 

Access to a global network of niche affiliates

Let’s say you offer a pretty niche product. You might own a fintech company that supports immigrants with building credit. 

…An e-commerce brand that delivers gluten-free meals. 

…A dropshipper that connects fashion designer lovers with realistic-looking dupes. 

Whatever your niche, it’s much easier to find affiliates within it through the filters offered by an affiliate network. 

You could do the research yourself and scour through endless Instagram profiles, Google results, and customer history to find ideal partners. Or, you could type in exactly what you’re looking for and find relevant tags for affiliates that meet your criteria on an affiliate network marketplace. 

Fraud protection and an extra layer of security

Don’t get us wrong; affiliate marketing platforms also have fraud prevention features like suspicious click alerts and data encryption. 

However, affiliate networks like Admitad catch fraudulent affiliates before they even make it onto the platform. Often, networks will have criteria aspiring affiliates must meet before joining, including minimum traffic levels, ID verification, and other methods to ensure you aren’t looking at fraudulent affiliates on their marketplace. 

Learn more about Admitad’s fraud prevention features. 

Integrations to other marketing platforms

We know that affiliate platforms offer integrations, too. However, affiliate networks often have more robust marketing connections to help you leverage advertising platforms and paid marketing models in addition to your existing affiliate strategy. 

Complementary Use of Both Platforms

If you’re wondering how to choose an affiliate marketing solution that best fits your business, here’s the trick: you don’t have to choose. The best affiliate marketing programs leverage both solutions (software and networks) to see success. Why? Because both solutions bring something to the table. 

Think of affiliate networks as a middleman connecting you to many potential affiliates with helpful filters and attributes to help you find your ideal partners. 

On the other hand, affiliate marketing software is more like an all-in-one hub, with multiple tools and resources to operate and improve your affiliate program. These include affiliate commissions, affiliate payments, branded asset sharing, communication, 

Our take? Leverage the power of both platforms to take your affiliate program to the next level. Here’s how we’d play it: 

Subscribe to Tapfiliate’s software

You need affiliate software to operate your affiliate program, which includes assigning commissions and paying affiliates, sharing affiliate content that aligns with your brands, and setting up tracking to keep tabs on conversions from your existing affiliates. Take a look at this quick affiliate software comparison for businesses to see why Tapfiliate is a top option.

Pick from three pricing plans that are designed to be affordable while allowing space for you to scale. You’ll get access to up to 2,000 tracked conversions, integrations, real-time tracking, and flexible commissions with our Essentials Plan at only $74 per month if you pay annually. Once you subscribe, Tapfiliate’s affiliate program setup is easy to follow. 

PS — we offer a free 14-day trial for you to get a feel for our software before you commit to a subscription!

Recruit Your Customers

Your regular customers are your brand’s biggest ambassadors. They purchase your products without any incentive and know every feature and attribute because they’ve already used them. 

Meaning?

These are prime candidates for affiliates, and Tafpfiliate’s platform helps you recruit them seamlessly. 

Trigger automatic recruitment email invitations to customers once they hit your desired milestone (perhaps three purchases within three months). Then, personalize the template and include key benefits of your affiliate program to entice your prospects. 

But if you want to reach a more specific type of affiliate partner that you aren’t certain is captured in your customer base? That’s where an affiliate network becomes a key player in your affiliate strategy. 

Sign up for an affiliate network

Maybe your customers love your products, but they just don’t have the audiences or followings to propel meaningful growth to your affiliate sales or conversions. You might seek affiliate marketers with more experience in this world, perhaps with regular content posts on social media, or a high-traffic website to promote your products. 

An affiliate network helps you find these specific affiliates with filters on their online marketplaces. You can assess an affiliate’s fit based on their social media channels, categories, and overall history as an affiliate. 

Similarly, you can use an affiliate network to attract worthy candidates to your program. Highlight your affiliate program’s key benefits and what it means to partner with your brand. 

Make sure you identify compensation specifics and research similar brands so you can keep your program offerings competitive. After all, an affiliate is more likely to pick a program that offers higher commission rates or better opportunities for increases, right?

One last note: affiliate networks are great for growing your affiliate partner base. But if you’re happy with your existing base, consider the value a network would add to your program before you sign up. Remember, affiliate networks are free for affiliates but have a cost for brands (referred to as merchants on popular affiliate networks). Oftentimes, you’ll have to pay a hefty initiation fee just to place your brand on their network, along with monthly fees. 

Monitor each platform’s practices and performances

Here’s the thing: no technology is perfect. When you’re choosing affiliate software or an affiliate network, you’re bound to experience a few snags along the way. The difference, however, is in how often those snags occur and the company’s ability to deal with them promptly. 

One example is payment processing. Admitad assures reliable and timely payments to affiliates through its platform and offers various payout methods to cater to an international network of partners. The network even promises affiliates payment on behalf of the advertiser (brand) if they’re late through a feature called instant payout. This builds trust among your affiliates and improves your relationships with them, which, in turn, encourages them to keep selling your products. 

However, some affiliate networks have negative reviews on Capterra and other software review sites for long delays in payments to affiliates. These issues can be catastrophic to your program as they diminish your credibility to high-performing affiliates. Monitor payments closely and ensure you have a backup plan if a network or software has these issues. 

It’s also important to cross-check your affiliate performance reported on a platform with your business’s actual sales. If you notice too many discrepancies, your software isn’t reliable in one of its most important features (tracking). This warrants considering switching to a new platform. 

Conclusion

Bottom line? Affiliate marketing software and affiliate networks both have a role to play in any successful affiliate program. 

You can make your marketing process more streamlined and boost affiliate revenue with the insights and workflows of an affiliate marketing platform. You can also recruit more niche affiliates with greater protection for your brand via affiliate networks. 

But step one to a revenue-flowing program is to get it going. As one of the top affiliate marketing solutions for e-commerce, SaaS, and subscription niche businesses, Tapfiliate is proud to support you through your affiliate program launch, management, and scaling.